But in some places Like I had a student from India, a doctor of ministry student, who said almost everybody that he prays for in India gets healed. UFO sightings happened all the time in the 1970s and 1980s but suddenly drop when we put cameras in everyone's pocket? This is like the difference between theists asking skeptics to explain how the disciples ate fish with Jesus, when in reality what we have to explain is that we have a text that has a story where the disciples ate fish with Jesus. Near death experiences are only reported within religions that support dualism. Sometimes God uses things. The same thing occurs with UFO claims, homeopathy studies, and psychic abilities. And in each case, it's a witness to God's Glory where God gives grace to overcome in different kinds of situations. Each of those people are in the same position as the boy Elijah speaks about and will certainly attribute a God-given miracle to their healing. It's walked though in a 5-part blog series: We keep coming back to the question about how you would test for miracles. Taking the story as the evidence is problematic. Scott Rae: Close, Medine. Meanwhile, her muscles were atrophied. But this one, I think, we were also able to communicate something of guts, heart in the midst of suffering. And of course, accounts from the west, it was easier to get the medical documentation so there were strengths with a lot of these. Christian epistemologist, software engineer, musician, not necessarily in that order. It also includes the audio recording of Duane Miller, Contains an interview with Bruce Van Natta, the mechanic I referenced who lost most of his small intestines in an accident and was later healed. This barely qualifies as a pilot study. Biography [ edit] Pharmaceutical companies don't complain about these steps, they just do the work. This example is a category 1 miracle claim. This is pretty silly. 2022 Blaze Media LLC. "You just wonder how legitimate are these miracle claims in the 21st century?" Some were tested in prosperity. Recently, there was some data indicating possibly faster-than-light neutrinos. So we're talking about something like hundreds of millions of people. Once you admit there are other agents, you need a process for actually determining that God -- as opposed to some other agent or natural process -- actually was the cause. It is a notable pattern for something to become less observable to more carefully you're able to observe it. And this is not by any means the most dramatic story I found. It was predicted that she would die soon. Keener: in terms of anomalies whether they're anomalies or whether they're explainable in some way it helps if there's a pattern. In addition to Case Western Reserve, all This time with them pushing her father, disabled father in a wheel barrel and they left a home that they would never see again and ended up basically in the forest, or villages in the forest, abandoned buildings, for the next year and a half. prayer, laying of hands, religious service, etc) where miracles are claimed to be happening but they happen in only a small part of those same contexts and there's not a good reason give for that difference. Partly, because we are human and have many biases. Also we need to know what happens when there is no treatment as a control. Certainly months in the case of severe atrophy over the course of years. Personally I like looking into the details of miracle claims because they spotlight the scientific process, when it is misused or when people try to use the authority of science but don't want to go through the admittedly hard work to earn it. It's not enough to be given the treatment and see an improvement afterward. Half received prayer; the other half didnt. candidates for its presidency.. What problems are you interested in? Elijah: I also think we in the west have a bias toward poor people as not having knowledge of when something's dead or an arm is broken or something of that nature and so I think when people put themselves in situations where they pray for the sick and a whole village knows this child was born blind from birth they're 15 years old and that person sees gets their sight back and this is a different religion and that village testifies he was blind now, he sees that is a different scenario than we're talking about here and the lens of science really can't speak to that. This is the reason the specifics matter. Syndersmiraculous healing, which unfolded more than 30 years ago, was apparently so shocking that even her doctors have written about her seemingly impossible medical turn-around. Synder's miraculous healing, which unfolded more than 30 years ago, was apparently so shocking that even her doctors have written about her seemingly impossible medical turn-around. The current results are suggestive, but are not conclusive. Bizarrely, her calves were inflated and her once-atrophied muscles worked again and thats not all. And then if so, then how do you account for that? Eventually I found some of it, but what surprised me was the dramatic nature of some of this. And then I said "In Jesus's name, Amen" and so we moved on. #religion He encountered scores of healings and other claims of the miraculous along the way, but there was one case in particular that truly blew his mind: the case of Barbara Snyder. Share it with a friend. The precise timing of Snyders I think people sitting back and watching kind of don't take into account that this is life-changing stuff that's happening to these people. The point is to first establish that there is some interesting effect there, regardless of the cause, and only after passing that threshold do we get to consider a more in-depth investigation. Although MS can come in milder forms, Barbara's condition deteriorated quickly. It just really annoys me this is always conflated. Nathan: I think what we're seeing here are the fruits of apologetics in some ways. I mean you could see it, the stories are so compelling that just based on the empirical data that you have, I found the case for miracles pretty hard to refute. We would not believe any medical claim that didn't have these properties, so we are not having too high of a standard -- we are just refusing to lower the standard in these cases. Scott Rae: Welcome to the podcast Think Biblically, Conversations on Faith and Culture. Is this case unusual? Like that's just assuming what you wanted to establish. Scott Rae: Well that gets us to the books that I want to talk more about today. We're all aware of suffering in the world, but miracles is a happy topic. I could show you cases of arms growing back theoretically speaking and you would not believe it you would come up with natural explanations. It's amazing that this kind of study convinces anyone -- it violates pretty much every rule of good medicine with its multiple selection biases, lack of blinding, and lack of controls. chair James C. Wyant said that Fred DiSantoan alumnus and trustee who begins Visit Pure Flix for access to thousands of faith and family friendly movies and TV shows. The blind will see. So I asked Antoinette Malumbay, "How long was it that Terese wasn't breathing?" But it's a wonderful volume. Craig serves with me on the Board of Evangelical Theological Society. The response is, essentially, that I am demanding too much evidence. Craig Keener: Well if you ask me what motivated me to write a 1000 page book on miracles I could say nothing because I wasn't planning to do it initially, but it was certainly one of the most enjoyable projects I've worked on. Craig Keener, Michael Shermer & Elijah Stephens, Case Report of gastroparesis healing: 16 years of a chronic syndrome resolved after proximal intercessory prayer, Case report of instantaneous resolution of juvenile macular degeneration blindness after proximal intercessory prayer, Study of the therapeutic effects of proximal intercessory prayer (STEPP) on auditory and visual impairments in rural Mozambique, Delia Knox healed from being paralyzed after 22 years, Sean George comes back after a heart attack, https://guides.library.stonybrook.edu/evidence-based-medicine/levels_of_evidence, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15166467/, https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/full-moon-does-not-affect-mental-health-emergency-room-study-suggests, first evidence for the accelerating universe, https://seangeorge.com.au/my-story/medical-details/, phenomenon of spontaneous recovery of heart activity, https://www.patheos.com/blogs/secularoutpost/2019/04/06/the-resurrection-of-dr-sean-george-part-1-summary/, https://www.patheos.com/blogs/secularoutpost/2019/05/10/the-resurrection-of-dr-sean-george-part-2-littlewoods-law/, https://www.patheos.com/blogs/secularoutpost/2019/05/24/the-resurrection-of-dr-sean-george-part-3-georges-argument/, https://www.patheos.com/blogs/secularoutpost/2019/05/26/the-resurrection-of-dr-sean-george-part-4-evaluation-premise-1c/, https://www.patheos.com/blogs/secularoutpost/2019/06/26/the-resurrection-of-dr-sean-george-part-5-evaluation-of-premise-a4/, evidence that someone was sick at one time, evidence that they were not sick at a later time, sometime between those two points they claimed that they were prayed for (and don't always demonstrate that they actually were prayed), they used xrays to diagnose it originally, which is not the best for soft tissue. Case studies may be suggestive, but they are there so that you can propose hypotheses to test more rigorously. well; Barbara is a perfect fit.. So for example, if I just say oh well there was spontaneous remission you could say that's implausible given our medical knowledge but it's going to be very hard to establish that that's actually like impossible, to definitively rule it out and so the question of which is a more plausible explanation and not can you rule it out. And so I guess my first question is, what motivated you to undertake that because your field has been pretty technical New Testament studies. I cook breakfast sandwich and lunch sandwichs I'm also a cashier. Here's where consistency comes in and the desiderata of Jaynes. Further, the world is complex and any given effect can have many different possible causes, especially if we are talking about biological systems. She deteriorated over a period of many years, several operations, many hospitalizations, Strobel explained. This one is much like the previous one, but there is no study -- just the stories. [] these things actually do tend to happen in certain circles more than more than in others and that's why for me it would be hard for me to see it as a is a coincidence. Not at all, given that all of the facts of his case fall within the known bounds of what is possible and observed, even if rare. I just was trying to write a footnote for my Acts Commentary because one of the arguments against the reliability of Acts, you know, one fifth of Acts or one third of Mark roughly, deal with miracles. It also calls into question the motives of God -- God is more concerned to give you a pool table than to cure leukemia in children or heart defects or nearly anything else. Done! We average between 2 and 3 posts a day. What surprised you? Her feet and fingers were suddenly straight and normal again. "It got to the point where she was dying. By counting these as "hits" and ignoring the deaths of starving children because they are "misses" and don't support their narrative is an indictment of the entire mode of thought. A doctor won't want to look at a regrown kidney because it will look like he did insurance fraud. I think we could say your relationship with Medine and how you guys, the two of you made it together, counts as one of those major miracles in your life. I commented about it like. I was talking with Antoinette Malumbay with my wife translating for me 'cause my wife knew the story only second hand herself. These theists are in fact arguing for a lower level of evidence than we demand of the universities and pharmaceutical companies for their claims. Christians) than other groups. President Barbara R. Snyder announced today that she will become the next leader of the organization that represents the 63 leading research universities in the U.S., as well as two in Canada. This shows a profound lack of imagination on the part of the investigators, and I think shows their hand. A gymnast back in high school, Barbara hadn't walked in seven years. And sometimes there's also a catch-22 because after so many years the medical documentation has been discarded. In my opinion this study represents a larger trend that I have discussed before clinical research going backwards in quality after higher quality studies yield negative results. It was assumed that Stargardt's disease was the best fit for her symptoms, but she has no family history for this genetic condition. Also, the theists show a profound lack of imagination in coming up with studies that can test the involvement of an agent, while ruling out other effects. (Read also:Are the Biblical End Times upon us? Scott Rae: Tell me first, one of the books I'd like to talk about first is the book Impossible Love. But she, but it happened. We also can't rule out that he was prayed for many many times in 16 years, and only at this particular time for some other reason he recovered. Also, this condition is known to come and go in some patients. One of the remarkable stories recounted in Lee Strobel's book "The Case for Miracles" involves a hopelessly ill woman named Barbara Snyder, who had suffered for many years with multiple sclerosis. The fact that there are only two or three of these, that these are the best they have, given all of this time is damning evidence against their case that miracles actually occur at even the 1% level. In all of human history there has never been one single credible and fully verified miracle cure. I doubt Keener has tried to actually get this done beyond the anecdotal level. And of course there's no way to test medically because there was no medic op available. Scott Rae: I'd say that's quite a footnote! I am delighted that the board selected Barbara to lead AAU The theists seem unwilling to do the work and want a pass anyway. I made a number of these errors in the episode, and I think it is because 1) the scientific papers (rightly) don't use names and 2) when the stories are told they don't cite their sources well and 3) I'm terrible with names. But if you're that kid you've got to go what's more probable: an event that just randomly happened or the God that prayed I was praying to gave me my sight back, and so that is a part of the conversation. We we need a whole lot of a whole lot of cases to be able to to examine that. This one actually is, I think this one is not in the book because I came across this afterwards. I mean I tried to get accounts from all sorts of different cultures. Here is her story. In particular, it includes an interview with Barbara Snyder, who was instantaneously healed from advanced multiple sclerosis, as also attested by her two physicians. And we'll have a way that you can access that in the transcript of this. Barbara Snyder's healing from MS shocked doctors. He didn't see any fire so people are getting [inaudible] what's this about? As James says, "God really needs to up his game.". Further, the authors admit, although they do not disclose the data, that previous attempts to document response to the treatment in other populations have failed. Snyder, who became president of Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) in July 2007, will join the Association of American Universities (AAU) by the end . So as you've cataloged these different stories and different accounts, what's been the sort of the breath of the geography that's been involved? There was no medical help available in the village so she strapped the child to her back and ran to a nearby village where family friend [inaudible] was doing ministry. Or in Matthew 12 and Luke 11 where is says, "If I by the finger of the Spirit of God drive out demons, the Kingdom of God has come upon you." These are two red flags which will need some level of caution in establishing the cause of the condition improving. So we understand it's not, it's not saying that somebody has lack of faith. If that agent were doing these kinds of actions we would expect to see a bigger effect, or that agent is being capricious. It's all just ad hoc special pleading. (Read also:Columbine survivors powerful lessons after facing terror). You should receieve a confirmation email shortly. And he said because these precious people that never had a chance to be exposed to God's extravagant love, He works in extravagant ways to let them know. placebo, memory contamination, fraud, spontaneous remission, etc) that will confound the effect so scientists have set up steps (e.g. randomized controlled studies, well considered controls, etc) to avoid these confounders. It will be life-changing for those individuals, for sure, even under the condition where there are no miracles. Note that the STEP study mentioned below is, Let me start by saying that there have been gold standard studies before and after STEP that reached the opposite conclusion: that the group receiving prayer had better outcomes, she said. I think it also is evident that the theists aren't serious about studying these things, and are content to believe things on bad evidence. of the members of the University Athletic Association are part of the AAU. In his book, The Case for Miracles, evangelist Lee Strobel cites the miraculous healing of Barbara Snyder that took place nearly 30 years ago. We don't know the timeline at all or the specifics, or any actual measurements. As Nathan puts it, it's telling believers who doubt "stop those naughty thoughts." Prayer, in her house, probably occurs even more frequently. When I've heard the murderer analogy it is to argue against Hume's uniform human experience against miracles, because someone could argue for the murderer by claiming it is against his uniform experience to murder someone -- he's never murdered anyone before. He wrote to the Social Security Administration saying, "I'm not blind anymore." And so he's already saying in his ministry the Kingdom is being expressed. It was easier for me for some cultures than for other cultures. Barbara R. Snyderis president of the Association of American Universities. There were plenty of other stories just like it, too. The entire approach of those arguing for miracles focuses on the (presumed) successes but in any real study for a treatment, we need to know all of the cases -- the ones that worked and the ones that didn't -- to provide evidence of efficacy. She had to stop and think to kind of calculate, well to get from this village to that village with this mountain and that mountain, she said, "About three hours.". James: I'm not a fan of eliminating explanations because i think that that's almost impossible because you can always augment the hypothesis with further details, so the issue is going to be one of comparative plausibility and explanatory scope. One miracle in particular stands out. Then a decade or so later, a replication study by Dr. William S. Harris and colleagues was published in the Archives of Internal Medicine. Were the results similar? This was a gold standard study of the effects of intercessory prayer on almost a thousand consecutively admitted coronary patients. We see this with homeopathy, where well-controlled studies are negative and then dismissed because treatments were not individualized. The trick is you have to dig a lot to get the actual facts of the matter, they don't typically present these to you like "here's the facts, and this is why we think it is a miracle" it's "the guy's intestine regrew" but that's not an established fact at all that's their interpretation of a certain set of facts. It's not just a few people. And remember Think Biblically about everything. She was blind, bedridden with severely impaired breathing due to a paralyzed diaphragm and a collapsed lung. Prior to that, she served as president of Case Western Reserve University from 2007 to 2020, where sheencouraged interdisciplinary excellence, catalyzed institutional collaboration, and reinvigorated alumni engagement and fundraising. Try comparing these claims to, say, the difficulty in confirming the Higgs boson, gravity waves, black holes, or the accelerating universe. an 18-year-old female lost the majority of her central vision over the course of three months in 1959 and was later diagnosed with juvenile macular degeneration (JMD). I went over her solutions when she did , Skepticism and Dubious Medical Procedures. Craig Keener: I think it's true in some places more than in others. In secular circles, well on the Internet at least, Atheists came out with critiques of it right away. I think we can. become the next leader of the organization that represents the 63 leading Even for much more modest claims than the ones made in the above discussions, randomized-controlled studies are the gold standard. A nice illustration of Even Miracles Take A Little Time-the miracle. The institution that is referenced for the work is Global Medical Research Institute (GMRI) and the documentary about miracles referenced is Send Proof. None of us would say that all of those are authentic, but still we're talking about an awful lot of stories. READ ALSO: Columbine Survivor's Powerful Lessons After Facing Terror. It's just his Baptist church group from just like maybe a half a dozen people to 600 members from, almost all from non-Christian backgrounds. All sorts of different cultures and I think shows their hand and think! 'S this about deteriorated quickly necessarily in that order to get accounts from sorts! And 3 posts a day actually get this done beyond the anecdotal.... Atrophy over the course of years because it will be life-changing for those individuals, for sure even!, or that agent is being capricious milder forms, Barbara hadn & # ;... It was easier for me 'cause my wife knew the story only second hand herself the Athletic. 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